This invention relates in general to communications, and more particularly to a system and method for communicating partial notifications relating to a presentity""s presence information.
Mobile and landline/wireline computing devices have in recent years become a valuable tool in day-to-day communications. Desktop computers, workstations, and other wireline computers currently allow users to communicate via e-mail, video conferencing, and instant messaging (IM) to name a few communication applications. Mobile devices, such as mobile telephones, handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc. also assist in day-to-day communication. Mobile/wireless telephones have conventionally served as voice communication devices, but through technological advancements have recently proved to be effective devices for communicating data, graphics, etc. Wireless and landline technologies continue to merge into a more unified communication system, as user demand for seamless communications across different platforms increases.
Many communication applications allow for real-time or near real-time communication that falls outside of the traditional voice communication associated with wireline and wireless telephone communications. Chat sessions, instant messaging, Short Message Service (SMS), video conferencing, are but a few such communication vehicles. Many of these types of communications have been well-received by the communicating public, and are expected to become increasingly popular, particularly in view of the proliferation of wireless devices and continual technological breakthroughs.
In order to implement such technologies, xe2x80x9cpresencexe2x80x9d technology is used to determine the location, willingness to communicate, and other parameters relating to real-time or near real-time communications. Presence technology generally refers to applications and services that facilitate location and identification of one or more endpoints to such communication links. For example, if a user of a wireless, handheld device would like to initiate an IM session with another IM user, presence services may be used to present users"" willingness to receive IM messages. Presence services are an integral part of third generation (3G) wireless networks, and are intended to be employed across a wide variety of communication devices.
Current presence service technology includes the concepts of presentities, presence servers, and watchers. Generally, a presentity can provide information as to its xe2x80x9cpresencexe2x80x9d (e.g., location, willingness to communicate at a certain time or with certain users, etc.). This information can be collected and utilized by presence servers, that can notify authorized xe2x80x9cwatchersxe2x80x9d who are interested in presence information that certain presence information is available. Watcher applications may be implemented in wireline and wireless terminals to obtain presence information from the presence servers about other users. This may come in the form of a notification, issued to the watcher by the presence server.
Conventionally, notifications to users/watchers that a targeted user/device has become available have been sent as complete presence information. In other words, there are a number of different pieces of presence information that are associated with the totality of the presence information, and original or updated notifications result in sending all of the presence information to the notification-subscribing users who are xe2x80x9cwatchingxe2x80x9d for the particular presence information. For example, in current IETF presence format specifications such as the Common Profile for Instant Messaging (CPIM) Presence Information Data Format (PIDF), all presence information is sent regardless of whether portions of the information being sent are already available to the watcher. In some environments, such as wireless environments, sending all of the presence information when only some portion of the information has changed may not be a favorable option, as the available bandwidth is typically significantly lower than in a fixed Internet environment.
Existing presence specifications do not provide any indication whether some data received earlier has become invalid. This can occur where, for example, watchers change filtering information, presentities change presence authorization levels, and presence attributes become unavailable on networks. Furthermore, the existing specifications do not provide versioning information, which is needed if presence information is delivered using multiple application protocols, because protocol-specific versioning mechanisms cannot be used in such instances.
Accordingly, there is a need in the communications industry for a more efficient and convenient manner of providing presence information. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art.
The present invention is directed to a system for communicating partial notifications relating to a presentity""s presence information.
In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for communicating presence information between presence servers and terminals coupled to the presence servers via a network. The method includes identifying at least one presentity to which a terminal has requested presence services. A presence document is created, where the presence document includes presence information corresponding to the presentity. The presence information is configured as partial presence information comprising less than a total of the presence information available for the presentity. The presence document having the partial presence information is communicated to the terminal requesting the presence information.
In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for notifying client terminals of presence information. The method includes creating a presence document for use by at least one terminal requesting presence information regarding a presentity. Creating a presence document includes creating at least one tuple, wherein the tuple includes a version value indicating a version of the tuple relative to previous versions of the tuple, and associating presence information with the tuple, wherein the presence information comprises a subset of the presentity""s complete set of presence information. The presence document is sent to the client terminal requesting the presence information, where the version value provided via the tuple is compared to a current version value stored on the client terminal. The client terminal is directed to update presence information associated with the tuple, if the version value provided via the tuple indicates new presence information is available for that tuple.
In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a presence awareness system is provided. The system includes at least one terminal having a watcher application that watches for presence information corresponding to a presentity. At least one presence server is provided, which is coupled to the terminal via a network. The presence server includes a processor configured to identify at least one presentity to which the watcher application has requested presence services. Via the processor (and other computing elements), a presence document including the presence information corresponding to the presentity is provided. The presence information is configured as partial presence information having less than the total of the presence information available for the presentity. The presence document having the partial presence information is communicated to the watcher application of the terminal requesting the presence information.
In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a presence server is provided, where the presence server is coupled to a plurality of terminals via a network. The presence server communicates presence information to one or more of the plurality of terminals via the network. The presence server includes a memory configured to store presence information for a plurality of presentities, and to store terminal subscriptions for terminals authorized to receive the presence information for one or more of the presentities. A processing system is provided with the presence server, and is configured to identify at least one presentity to which a particular terminal has subscribed, and to create a presence document including the presence information corresponding to the presentity, where the presence information is configured as partial presence information corresponding to a subset of a set of presence information available for the presentity. A data transmission module is coupled to the processing system to communicate the partial presence information via the presence document to the subscribing terminal over the network.
The above summary of the present invention is not intended to describe each illustrated embodiment or implementation of the present invention. This is the purpose of the figures and the associated discussion which follows.